What Windows 7 means

December 4, 2009

Transcript

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>> Rafe Needleman: Welcome to the Reporters' Roundtable, CNET's weekly deep dive into a burning tech topic. And this week, we are just days away from the launch of Windows 7. There is, to put it mildly, a lot riding on this release for Microsoft and the world at large. Anyway, Vista never lived up to its expectations. As we all know, even today, three years after the release of Vista, it has less than 19�percent of market share and that market share is declining according to Net Applications. A lot of people just never upgraded from XP, or they got a machine installed with XP on it instead of Vista, especially netbook buyers, and some are even abandoning Vista for Windows 7, which isn't even for sale yet, through various prerelease programs. Windows 7 is running itself at an estimated one on an estimated 1.5 percent of all computers. Windows overall still holds more than 92�percent market share, but it's the old and creaky XP that people are using, not Vista. Meanwhile, Apple continues to win new converts and fans with its OS Ten, which keeps getting better, not worse. The Mac platform recently topped 5 percent market share. So Windows 7 is Microsoft's attempt to recover from Vista. Can it work? Will it work? To discuss what Windows 7 means to Microsoft and to the industry overall and get into the details on that, we have two great guests on the Roundtable today. In the studio with us is Farhad Manjoo, author of the fantastic tech column over at Slate. Welcome aboard.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Thanks.
>> Rafe Needleman: He's also the author of the book, ^ITALICTrue Enough: Learning to Live in a PostFact Society.^NORMAL Welcome and we will hear from you today only facts. Correct?
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yes. It's good to be here.
>> Rafe Needleman: And coming in over the Internet's, actually the Telco system, MaryJo Foley who's the author of the always insightful, "All About Microsoft" blog over at ZDNet. It's a great read if you want to know what's going on with Windows, and it's a required read if you're responsible for supporting multiple Windows installations. MaryJo's also the author of the book, ^ITALIC Microsoft 2.0^NORMAL. Welcome MaryJo.
>> MaryJo Foley: Thank you very much.
>> Rafe Needleman: So guys, thank you very much for being here. Let's just kick it off with my big question about Windows 7 which is a question about Vista. What the hell happened with Vista? How did we get where we are today?
>> Farhad Manjoo: So, I mean, I think it just got off to a just got off to a terrible start and, you know, they improved it along the way, and I don't think that it deserves the kind of bad reputation that it has now. But perhaps initially it did, and then that perception just took over, I think. I think that, you know, its main problem at the moment and for a while is that it just has a really bad reputation.
>> Rafe Needleman: So not factually bad just reputationally bad.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah. I mean, you know, I've used Vista. I don't hate it. The other thing to remember is I don't think it offered that much more than XP, so people didn't see any great reason to upgrade or to get something new that was so kind of alien. I think the thing people forget is that XP, you know, it's eight years old, but it's great. It's an eightyearold operating system that many people use today for their computers, and they're fine with it.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. MaryJo, what's your take?
>> MaryJo Foley: You know, I keep wondering when we're going to see the Harvard Business Case study about what went wrong with Vista because I think about it as like what went right when you look back on it. There was so many things that went wrong. And I agree that in the end, like now, it's a pretty solid operating system, but as far as like having the reset, where they had to do it over in the middle of the development process and then the PC makers stopped believing they were ever gonna get it out, so they stopped testing against it. And then when it came out, nobody was ready. There were no drivers. There were no apps. Things didn't work. I mean, it's just like it's like one bad thing happened after another, and it just was like a snowball effect almost.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm.
>> MaryJo Foley: And I think the proof of that now is if you look at who's running Windows these days and just working on Windows, they pretty much got rid of the old Vista team, at least on the marketing side and they're out.
>> Rafe Needleman: So let's talk about that. Vista, while it may be stable today, it certainly was not a happy launch for anybody, and we can see that in the ongoing market share issues, the adoption rate. What changed inside Microsoft as a result of what happened with Vista?
>> MaryJo Foley: Well, a lot changed. Steven Sinofsky came in who is the guy best known for making Office work right and run right, and he pretty much set a whole bunch of new rules. He reorged the entire business. He set new goals and new do's and don'ts like what kind of code could be checked in. What wasn't acceptable to be checked in. And he just kind of redid the whole process top to bottom and said this is how it's gonna work guys and we're gonna make this predictable. We're gonna underpromise and overdeliver, and we're gonna make this operating system people wanted.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm. Do you think that those the promise that the expectations are overdone, underdone based on what we've been hearing? Not just what Microsoft is saying, but word that is getting out about Windows 7. Do you think that we are going to get what we expect, more or less?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I mean, it seems like we, you know, people have been using Windows 7 for almost a year now, and, you know, all of the kind of major reviews that have been out about it, not only the recent ones, but sort of over the entire testing period that the public has had access to it, everyone is sort of in general been positive. I mean, it's hard not to be positive after Vista. But at the same time, it seems like Microsoft is trying to underpromise under, you know, lower expectations. Which I think is a good strategy. I mean, it seems like it seems like after Vista the way to go would be to say, you know, this is a better this is a better operating system but not say any much more than that.
>> MaryJo, I think it was your story where you said that Ballmer is out on the road right now basically trying to, at this point at this late date, it seems to be that he's back pedaling on the promises of Win 7, and he seems to be trying to set expectations deliberately low after a year of hype. It seems kind of odd given that the timeline that seems a little weird to me.
>> MaryJo Foley: Yeah. You know, I kind of feel like it's almost more posturing than it is actually what he thinks. I think he's worried about expectations running out of control and especially financial expectations. You know, he keeps saying, "Don't, you know, okay it is going to be good for the PC industry that we're doing this, but we're not going to save the PC industry. And it's gonna be a good operating system, but until we see the feedback from the field, we can't promise everyone that it's gonna be the best thing since sliced bread." So I think I think what he's doing is more kind of like trying to keep Wall Street expectations and customer expectations in check even though the early tester feedback and their own internal feedback at Microsoft has shown it's pretty solid.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Sorry. Is it I also heard him say, I think this was perhaps you reporting, but I'm not sure, I also heard him say the feedback for Vista was good, so that they can't really tell anything from the feedback, so, you know, were they sort of blindsided by what happened with Vista, and like is it possible that they're worried they're actually worried that they could be blindsided again?
>> MaryJo Foley: You know, it was funny. That was my story, and I wrote about how Steve Ballmer said, "Well, look we had good expectations from testers with Vista. They all liked it, and when it came out, that's when everybody started screaming."
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah.
>> MaryJo Foley: That's sort of true. I mean, I get a lot of mail from people who are in the technical beta program, and who are the hardcore testers who said, "We told Microsoft Vista was gonna be a disaster. We begged them not to release it when they did. And they didn't listen to us." But I think who Ballmer was talking about more was like the masses. You know how every build of Windows, they send it out not just to the hardcore power users, but they also make these public builds available. And Ballmer's point, I think, was the public didn't scream, so we weren't really expecting it was gonna be a disaster.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm. So how important is this release, this operating system release to the electronic excuse me, to the PC industry overall?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I saw I saw a comment from Michael Dell suggesting that it was pretty important and, you know, I think I would imagine that it's just people I know who have over the past few years, people I know been sort of have been asking me more and more like in general computer advice, whether they should buy a Mac.
>> Rafe Needleman: Right.
>> Farhad Manjoo: And I have to imagine that, you know, some part of that is all of the negative perception surrounding Vista and people's sort of fear of running Vista. And so, you know, if that changes, you know, you know it's not true that everyone has been buying Macs instead of PCs, but I think if that changes people will sort of it can't it can't but help the PC industry.
>> Rafe Needleman: So you think that Apple is kind of sitting back just hoping hoping hoping that this launch fizzles
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah. I mean I think
>> Rafe Needleman: Or flops.
>> Farhad Manjoo: I mean, I think Vista's failure has been a great boon to Apple over these past few years and after, you know, and I think Windows 7 is pretty good, and I think that that sort of easy ride a little bit is gonna end for Apple.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah? MaryJo?
>> MaryJo Foley: Well, I think it was interesting when we saw, I think it was Gartner numbers at the start of this week, saying that the current quarter or that they just tracked PC the PC market was already starting to pick up even before the Windows 7 launch.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm.
>> MaryJo Foley: So I don't think everybody's necessarily waiting waiting waiting till October 22nd when the retail lunch happens. I mean, a lot of people aren't on the same cycle as Microsoft. I also think it's interesting, you know, Apple's kind of hinting around this week there was an article in ^ITALICBusiness Week^NORMAL saying we're we have some things up our sleeve where we're gonna try to put some ads out there where we disparage Windows 7, and we really focus on how hard it's going to be to upgrade from XP. So I think I think, you know, there are gonna be some interesting battles. I'm also interested to see if Google ends up doing anything around the Chrome 0S right in time for the launch. So there's like all these different factors in play.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm.
>> MaryJo Foley: But I think I think there's no doubt that there's going to be some pickup in the PC market as a result of Windows 7.
>> Rafe Needleman: I can't I bet my random speculation is that the Microsoft guys are just waiting for Apple to talk about the upgrade problems from XP, and they'll start to talk about upgrading a G4 Mac to run Snow Leopard, which guess what, can't be done
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right.
>> Rafe Needleman: at all. Anyway, not that I'm a Microsoft booster here, I've been using them both and, whatever, they're both operating systems, you know, to an extent. But I am interested in I am really interested in what this operating system means to the industry and to Microsoft and in business as well. And I think that's something that's overlooked a lot when you've got fan boys, like us, you know, in a way, talking about Windows 7 and or another operating system in general. We've talked about it on our computers or on my mom's computer. But there's this huge constituency which drives most 0S business, at least for Microsoft, which is the enterprise, the business. And that's an area where Microsoft seems to be really tapped in and to have had major blunders especially with Vista. Let's talk about what Windows 7 means to Microsoft's business business.
>> MaryJo Foley: Yeah. It means a lot to their business business. But, you know, there's a couple of factors you have to weigh when you're thinking about this. One is: Businesses aren't going to run out no matter how good they think Windows 7 is and go buy copies for 100,000 users and put them on the PC's this week. I mean, that's just not gonna happen because businesses have to go through the whole testing, the pilot stage, you know, checking if everything they have in their shop works and what doesn't and what can they afford not to have work. So I was on a Gartner presentation this week where they were talking to business users and they said they did a poll, and they said, "How many people are ready to jump?" And there was like a 6 percent share ready to jump this year, but the bulk of business users who were on that presentation said second half 2010 at the earliest.
>> Rafe Needleman: And those are people are these people who are on Vista or who are on XP?
>> MaryJo Foley: It was a mix. It was people who had partial Vista implementations and a lot of people who were still on XP.
>> Rafe Needleman: And how much of Microsoft 0S business is business customers versus consumer? Do we know?
>> MaryJo Foley: I don't think they break those numbers like that.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay. Okay. You know, another thing that has interestingly affected the operating system business a great deal is netbooks. Do you use Far, do you use a netbook?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I have tried to use a netbook, and I have one that I never use because I hate the keyboard. But and actually, you know, I bought it with XP on it, and I put the Mac 0S on it. So
>> Rafe Needleman: You hacintoshed it?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I hacintoshed my netbook.
>> Rafe Needleman: Wow.
>> Farhad Manjoo: It made it marginally better, but it couldn't fix the stupid keyboard. But, you know, it's fine and and, you know, it I never would have even considered running Vista on there because of all the terrible things I've heard about Vista running on netbooks or not even possible, so
>> Rafe Needleman: So what do we know, for both of you guys, what do we know about the impact of netbooks on the projections on Win 7. Now, I know Michael Dell came out and said the other day that he thinks that people who get netbooks are happy with them for, what, 36�hours I think was his quote.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah.
>> Rafe Needleman: Until they have your reaction which is I can't type on this bloody thing, which I agree with, and you know, netbooks traditionally, today anyway, are sold with XP which Microsoft keeps extending support for so it will run on netbooks. What happens with that with netbooks and when we go to Windows 7? Does XP keep going or does Win 7 become the operating system for everything?
>> Farhad Manjoo: So I've, you know, I've heard that it runs fine on netbooks. I haven't actually done it. Have you Mary or have you�seen it?
>> MaryJo Foley: No. I haven't tried it. But I've seen them demo it. Even the ultimate version can run on a netbook.
>> Rafe Needleman: And Vista and Vista would not, right? Or not well anyway?
>> MaryJo Foley: Not on most.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay. All right.
>> MaryJo Foley: Yeah. But, you know, Microsoft flooding PC makers keep preloading XP on for almost almost like I think about six to nine more months
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm.
>> MaryJo Foley: and that's the cutoff. But everybody's expecting most of the OEMs to start moving over to Windows 7 before that. I think I think the thing we don't know about netbooks is how much is Microsoft gonna charge PC makers per copy for Windows on netbooks. I mean, on XP supposedly they were charging them only $15�
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right.
>> MaryJo Foley: which is really low for a version of Windows. But with Windows 7 Microsoft is making all this noise like we're going to charge them more. Well, if they try to charge them more than 40, $50 per copy, they're not going to be able to do it because the margins on netbooks.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right. And that, I mean, that really talking about Google and if Chrome 0S is actually a real thing that could be sort of an opening. And, you know, Google's also more and more or you hear some OEMs are trying to put Android on netbooks, so sort of these lower, you know, less functional, less bells and whistles operating systems like Android or Chrome OS could sort of have an opening in the netbook market I think.
>> Rafe Needleman: All right. You know, that makes perfect sense in a world where people have just one computer or their primary computer is a netbook. But the interesting thing is I believe most netbooks are sold to people who already have other computers, so they switch between platforms.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right.
>> Rafe Needleman: And don't people want commonality of the user interface?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I would say no.
>> Rafe Needleman: Really? Okay. Go on.
>> Farhad Manjoo: I mean because here's I would say for two reasons. First, because a lot of what we do on computers these days and especially on netbooks is on the web, and that looks the same whatever OS you're running on. And I think people are used to switching. I mean, people run iPhones and Windows computers, and they have completely different OS's and they use them for similar functions, but they think of them, I think, as being in different domains. I would imagine that it would be completely fine to run, you know, an Android netbook and a Windows 7 desktop and I think you'd be fine compatibility and just sort of the psychic difference of switching from one to the other. I think you'd be fine.
>> Rafe Needleman: How about in business mergers. You think that big shops will support multiple OS's, I mean, aside from the Mac or those weird designer people stuff like that.
>> MaryJo Foley: Well, you know, it's funny. I I'm a fan of netbooks just for the portability factor.
You know, to me a netbook doesn't compete so much with a notebook PC as it competes with a phone. And so, you know, when you're talking about different interfaces, you know, people run iPhones with Windows laptops, you know. They can switch back and forth between the interfaces, and I think the same is going to be true with netbook and Windows PC. But I do think people are going to look primarily, especially in business, as netbooks being a complementary second, third machine and not a replacement for a PC.
>> Rafe Needleman: So if consumers are getting used to, and business users as well or just users in general, are getting used to moving between platforms and having kind of the mental flexibility to do basically the same thing in different ways on different devices, how does this mean that Apple and by extension Android are more of a threat now then they ever were?
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah. I mean, yes, although I would qualify that. I mean, I don't think they're a huge threat. I think that I think that Windows, you know, owns the desktop. I think that they own the laptop. Sort of the what we think of is kind of traditional computers. I think they're gonna be fine on that. I just you know, there's a big question whether that's the future of computing and all those other platforms Windows, you know, has trouble on. But but, you know, I sort of think that if you think of Android being a threat, it's not really a threat on the desktop, but if people start running it on the desktop and think of it as kind of and start learning it, I think that it could be a threat to kind of Windows way of computing, you know, on all other kinds of devices.
>> Rafe Needleman: The chat room wants to know why I haven't mentioned Linux yet, and we have to
>> Farhad Manjoo: Well, Chrome OS is Linux. So
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. But you think that I don't want to get too far away from the Windows topic here, but is Chrome what could bring Linux to the mainstream?
>> Farhad Manjoo: We have no idea what Chrome is.
>> Rafe Needleman: Or Android rather. Android is Linux too as well.
>> Farhad Manjoo: That's true.
>> Rafe Needleman: Is it not? Or am I wrong on that?
>> Farhad Manjoo: You know, I think it is. I don't know.
>> Rafe Needleman: I'm pausing. I'm stretching here while the chat room will answer this question for me. But anyway, could would could the Chrome OS be the thing that makes Linux palatable and could that be a threat to, you know, the Windows [inaudible] on the desktop.
>> Farhad Manjoo: I guess I'd qualify it by saying I think it's all sort of about implementation, and I think that from what I've heard from what Google says, Chrome OS and, you know, and the Android the implementations of Android on the computers
>> Rafe Needleman: Which is Linux I just found out.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yes.
>> Rafe Needleman: Good.
>> Farhad Manjoo: They're meant to do a limited number of things, and so Chrome 0S will be mainly an operating system to run the web. And, you know, to the extent that some people might be happy with that, I think that it would be a fine system for them. I don't I don't know if that really does much for kind of the this kind of dream of the Linux community, which is to, you know, have desktop Linux and some instances people say that it could replace Windows. I don't really think that that could happen.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay. So in Windows 7, it is to my mind and I'm probably gonna get a lot of flack for this, so this gonna be my line going forward for the next couple of weeks, which is basically it's Vista SP2 because it's the same core, and the UI is better. And I like it better, and it's faster. But it's not that much faster. What are the really important parts of Windows 7 for both the consumers and for businesses that will make it work or not?
>> MaryJo Foley: I'm laughing to myself here because they're not gonna like you saying that, Rafe.
>> Rafe Needleman: I don't care.
>> MaryJo Foley: They keep saying, Microsoft being they here, they keep saying it's a major release of Windows that it's not Vista done right as so many people say. I have to agree with you and not with the Sinofsky regime at Microsoft. But, you know, to say it's Vista done right that shouldn't be a small thing either.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right.
>> MaryJo Foley: To me, the biggest plus about Windows 7 isn't multitouch. It isn't the new UI. It isn't any of these things Microsoft's holding up, but it's little things like it shuts down faster. It starts up faster. It, you know, fewer prompts for security. All those little things that make you want to use it instead of hate to use it.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm. Now, but what about features that are already in, for example, the XP virtualization or the revised [inaudible]. What are what are people looking at the consumers and businesses in general that are the big changes? I mean, even if they're just part of the UI or minor tweaks. But what are the minor changes that really matter that people will be paying the most attention to, you think?
>> MaryJo Foley: Well, so businesses it's some of these features like Branch Cache, which if you're running in a in a kind of I'm tying to think of the word� decentralized configuration. That you'll have better better latency and all that kind of thing.
>> Rafe Needleman: What is Branch Cache?
>> MaryJo Foley: Branch Cache. Good question. It's hard to explain it for me. It's� it's a feature I believe I should have this right off the top of my head, but I don't. Feature that lets you, well, let's skip that one.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay.
>> MaryJo Foley: It's been a long week.
>> Rafe Needleman: [Inaudible] No worries.
>> MaryJo Foley: [Inaudible] point lately this week. But you know they've got a lot of like little features, BitLocker To Go, BitLocker, which is encryption. They've got some things around Federated Search that they're pushing as a big business feature. So they've got like these kind of features none of them to me are like: Wow, I've gotta have that if I'm a business user. But they're nice things to have and a lot of them light up as Microsoft likes to say when you use them in conjunction with Windows Server 2008r2. So it's another one of these things where Microsoft is trying to sell you the better together idea. And they're playing that up.
>> Rafe Needleman: Now, Farhad, you've been using Win 7. You've seen the new task bar where they combine running apps with your not running apps.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Yeah.
>> Rafe Needleman: Is that a big deal, you think, for usability?
>> Farhad Manjoo: So I went back and forth. First of all, I didn't like it. It makes it first of all, it's much more like the Mac.
>> Rafe Needleman: Um hmm. Oh, yeah.
>> Farhad Manjoo: And it's it was that was actually a feature that I haven't liked on the Mac before, and so it was disappointing to see Microsoft copying it. But as I've been using it more, I've started to like it more. I do like the arrow key function that shows you kind of a little bit of the window as you put your mouse over each of the icons. You know, you know what I think is the best thing about Windows 7
>> Rafe Needleman: Um.
>> Farhad Manjoo: is that it's not called Vista. It's it's
>> Rafe Needleman: That's what I keep saying.
>> Farhad Manjoo: You know, I don't remember. I don't know if you guys remember they did this Microsoft did this funny focus group thing which turned into the commercial a little while ago, Windows Mojave where they rebranded with Vista as Mojave and they showed it to people and people loved it, and I think that's, you know, that's really what Vista needs. It has all of these Win 7 has all of these little small things. But really it's not Vista and it sort of is a restart button for Vista. So and, you know, so what if it's just Vista SP2. I think, you know you know, Apple does that all the time. It releases a few new features and calls it a whole new name.
>> Rafe Needleman: Yeah. Apple charges less for their SPs than, actually, normally Microsoft doesn't charge at all, but this time they're charging a whole new OS price.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right. Yeah.
>> Rafe Needleman: Snow Leopard now Leopard to Snow Leopard was a giant underthehood revision.
>> Farhad Manjoo: Right.
>> Rafe Needleman: For consumers it's hardly noticeable except for a couple of, you know, extra features.
>> Farhad Manjoo: But even the upgrade before that was, you know, what you got was Time Machine, I think. I think that was the main new feature. And, you know, and it was a whole new 0S. And it was an OS with a whole new name and everything, so I think it's fine for Microsoft to just give it a new name even if it is a service pack.
>> Rafe Needleman: Well, let's let me rap up this discussion with one small little question, which is this: Does the operating system really even matter that much? I mean, so much we're doing right now is on the web, even Microsoft Office to an extent is beginning finally it's move off as a desktop suite to an integrated suite and eventually stands to reason will become mostly a web suite. How much does it matter to the consumer or to the business what the operating system is on this machine?
>> Farhad Manjoo: I agree with you, I think. You know, the operating system matters a little bit for, you know, it matters for businesses. It matters for people who have sort of huge installations of legacy programs that run on, you know, natively on the desktop. It doesn't matter for me and my personal life very much. I switch between apps I mean, computers often and OS's often, and I do a lot of stuff on mobile devices now and, you know, I think that the OS matters and is going to matter more sort of that the fight for the OS is in these other devices. But on the desktop, it doesn't� it's, you know, I like certain versions of the Mac OS. I like certain things about Windows, but I could switch between them easily.
>> Rafe Needleman: MaryJo, what do you think on the business side? How much do IT directors and CIOs and CTOs pay attention to OS's?
>> MaryJo Foley: Well, you know, I think people don't really care what the OS is underneath and a lot of people especially on the consumer side don't even know what OS they're running a lot of times. But it's funny this week I was looking at some of the mockups for the Chrome OS, and so many people are saying, "See, Chrome OS is proof you don't need an operating system." Well, it's still an operating system, and, you know, so to say operating systems go away, or operating systems are gonna fade into the background as people do more on the web. It's not actually true. I think I think what's changing is what we think of when we think of an operating system. Like, does it have to be this all encompassing thing full of every feature in and under the kitchen sink, you know, like Windows has been? Even Microsoft's taking more and more features out of Windows and making them available as addon services like Photo Gallery and things like that. So I think everyone's kind of converging on this idea that an operating system doesn't have to be all features munged into one thing. But you still need something to run your machine like the basic bottom level piece of fabric underneath all of this. And maybe it won't be a brand name thing so much anymore, but whoever has the best set of features and the best support for all the new processors coming out and the best ability to handle multi-core going forward. That's who's gonna win on the operating system front.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay. All right. With that, we're gonna rap up this episode of Reporters' Roundtable unless you guys have any other pith and wisdom to impart?
>> Farhad Manjoo: No. It's great to be here.
>> Rafe Needleman: Okay. Well, thank you guys. Thanks Farhad. Thanks MaryJo.
>> MaryJo Foley: Thank you very much.
>> Rafe Needleman: Thanks, Lynn Foo [assumed spelling], as always for producing. Be sure to visit slate.com for Farhad Manjoo's excellent stuff, and, of course, ZDNet for MaryJo's. Thank you all for listening to Reporters' Roundtable. We are live each Friday at 1 o'clock Pacific time, 4�p.m. Eastern at live.cnet.com. Next time we're probably gonna be talking about the dangers of cloud computing. Get it? Dangers psychic. Anyway, in light of Microsoft's Sidekick data loss, what do experts think about storing data in the cloud? We will have some great experts on the show to discuss this. Watch my Twitter feed which is just Rafe, RAFE, for updates on the guests. Feedback on this show and anything to discuss about this or questions for next time can be sent to our new email address at roundtable@cnet.com. Thanks everyone for listening and thanks to our guests [inaudible].
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